Common Core under fire in Ohio

Elementary school teacher Wendi Gruber assists her third grade students sign onto a pilot test program for Common Core curriculum on a laptop computer in May. The Ohio legislature id debating whether to repeal the standards which are to be fully implemented this year.(Photo: James Miller/The Marion Star)

The Common Core standards were developed over several years by state officials looking to ensure students are learning enough to succeed in today's economy.

The standards are supported by the associations representing Ohio's teachers, school administrators, school boards and businesses.

And they are on the precipice of failure.

A groundswell of opposition to the standards has forced a bill to repeal Common Core to the state legislative calendar; hearings are planned to begin Aug. 18.

Speaker Pro Tempore Matt Huffman, R-Lima, and Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marietta, announced a bill to repeal Common Core — the actual language of the bill has yet to be released. The bill comes as other states are taking similar actions: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called for his state to repeal them in the past month.

In the past several months, Huffman said he's heard more from constituents about Common Core than any other issue.

"This issue has turned," he said. "Americans now view this as an intrusion by the federal government on the most important thing to them: the education of their children."

It is not difficult to find people attacking the standards. Readers of a recent Common Core story responded with comments such as "It is absolute trash and a nightmare trying to help my son with homework!" and "It has never been about what is best for the kids....it is all about the money."

The standards were even credited for giving the tea party its only true state victory in the primary election. Former state Rep. Tom Brinkman defeated Rep. Peter Stautberg, R-Cincinnati, 54 percent to 46 percent.

Building opposition

So how did the standards approved in Ohio in 2010 with relatively little fanfare become a political pariah just four years later?

Thompson said that while national and state education groups officially support Common Core, many individual teachers or administrators have privately expressed concern with them. The more he learned about the standards, the more concerned he grew.

"While the tea party can claim credit for keeping this issue front burner when nothing else seemed to be happening, I think the rest of the world is catching up," he said.

Heidi Huber, liaison for Ohioans Against Common Core, said in a statement that people are beginning to see the "dire consequences" of the standards, and that chief among tem is "the destruction of local control." The group has advocated for repeal of the standards since March 2013.

In a statement, she lauded the repeal bill: "It acknowledges the efforts of private citizens to protect their parental authority in public education."

Local control and a fear of a federal education system — tied to President Barack Obama, billionaire Bill Gates and others — has been one of the chief arguments against the standards by opponents.

"This is beginning to prove another disaster by the federal government," Huffman said.

Conservative personality Glenn Beck hosted a live call to action last month titled "We Will Not Conform" intended to give people information to speak out against Common Core, and the Ohio opposition group touted having some of the best participation in the country.

"Take your children back from the state, reclaim your classroom and restore your country," the opposition group's website stated.

Vocal minority

Lisa Gray, project director of the Ohio Standard, said while there is opposition to the standards, it is only a vocal minority.

"I don't think there is broad-based support across the state for repealing the standards," she said.

Gray's group represents numerous Ohio groups ranging from the Ohio Board of Regents to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

She said there are legitimate concerns about how the standards will be used with standardized tests, but when she asks which standard people don't want their children to know, she gets silence.

Kay Wait, an instructional planner for Toledo Public Schools, said the biggest misconception among critics is separating the standards from curriculum and assessments.

"The standards are really just grade level expectations of what (the students) should know or what they need to do by the time they exit a grade," Wait said.

It is up to districts to decide how to meet those standards, and school boards are encouraged to localize their curricula to help their students reach those goals, according to Damon Asbury, director of legislative services with the Ohio School Boards Association.

"Most of our members are well on their way of implementing Common Core standards," he said.

In fact, the Oak Hills Local Schools Board near Cincinnati recently passed a resolution supporting the standards. Jan Hunter, board president, said while some of the members are "very conservative," they all saw the need for high quality standards to help students compete in a global economy.

She said the board feels it has the same level of control in setting its curriculum under Common Core as it did under any previous state standard.

"That control is not lost," she said.

Common Core is simply the newest version of state standards. That does not mean schools will be forced to purchase specific books or follow a national curriculum. In fact, Wait said, some books with the Common Core stamp are poor resources for students.

While the Obama administration has provided financial incentives for schools to adopt rigorous standards, such as Common Core, the argument the standards represent a federal takeover of education is "absolutely untrue," Gray said.

Education battleground

The passion among Common Core opponents is clear. Ohioans Against Common Core is asking its backers to "Paint the Statehouse Red" by purchasing shirts and other items in time for the committee hearings on the repeal bill

Huffman said the support is there to back his bill: "The leadership in the House supports the repeal of these standards, with the substitution of other high standards, to get the federal government out of the business of education in Ohio."

To counter the momentum of the opposition, Common Core supporters said they will be out in force to show the new standards are better for Ohio's children.

Asbury said his organization and others are planning to testify at the hearings and conduct media events to get their position out on Common Core.

Gray said her group is reaching out to legislators and talking with parents, but it is hard to quickly communicate their stance. For example, critics have argued that many of the new math standards are cumbersome or confusing, presenting upset kids who now hate math because they don't understand it.

It is up to supporters to argue that educators now understand more about brain development, so they have learned how better teach critical math skills. This likely will be different than how students' parents learned the skills, but that does not mean it is wrong.

The timing of the repeal also could pose problems; schools will be well into their academic year when the standards could be repealed.

"Districts spent a lot of time and money going to Common Core. We don't want to have to do that again," Asbury said. "We think that leads to chaos."

Thompson said timing should not be a reason to stay with a failed education policy.

"Nobody likes chaos, but … if you've identified that you're going down the wrong track, you don't continue off the cliff," he said. "I think you try to come up with a solution."

Chrissie Thompson, of The Cincinnati Enquirer, contributed to this report.

blanka@gannett.com

Twitter: @BenLanka

In their words

"We believe the process for developing these standards in reading and math was necessary and appropriate. The new standards are in response to the needs of the marketplace and the needs of students who want to succeed and excel in today's world." — Richard C. Lewis, executive director of Ohio School Board Association; R. Kirk Hamilton, executive director of Buckeye Association of School Administrators; David Varda, executive director of Ohio Association of School Business Officials.

"Now that the rank awfulness of the Common Core standards is finally becoming known, states are starting to back out. That is democracy in action, whereas the initial imposition of Common Core was a top-down, command-and-control approach done through a smoke-and-mirrors sleight of hand intended to look like private, state-led action. The fact that states are leaving the program proves that Common Core never was state-led and always was a big-government scam." — S.T. Karnick, director of research at the Heartland Institute

Sample standards

Here are some examples of what students are expected to know after a particular level of schooling under Common Core. To read all the standards, go to education.ohio.gov and search for Common Core standards. Comparisons of previous standards and the new standards also can be found there.

Level

Math

Language arts

Kindergarten

Count to 100 by ones and by tens.

Recognize common types of text such as storybooks and poems.

Second grade

Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.

Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

Fourth grade

Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication to multiply a fraction by a whole number.

Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.

Sixth grade

Understand that positive and negative numbers are used together to describe quantities having opposite directions or values.

Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and refocusing the inquiry when appropriate.

Eighth grade

Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used.